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You can have an affair, but you cannot hide it, especially if you are famous - so the story goes. Poor John Edwards; it is all in the gutter now. His boyish good looks have been stained by sexual promiscuity. Everybody has sex. That's not the problem. The problem is who you do it with. And so when you preach morality and family values to hundreds of millions of eligible voters and then do the opposite, well, that's a problem. Hypocrisy is an understatement.

The question is, what do you do next. Damage control? Spill your heart out and deal with it? Or just take it one day at a time?

So what is the lesson learned from the Edwards fiasco? A typical response from Thai politicians would probably be: you can do the nasty, but don't get caught, especially if you want to be the president of the US.

A former Thai foreign minister who was confronted by a reporter about an allegation from a well-known mamasan known as "Oy BM" that he had used her services, responded with a line that was picked up by the foreign press. "Whoever wants to be a saint, let him be a saint," said the minister.

The fact that we allow our public leaders to get away with such comments says something about us as a society. Should we expect more from our leaders when it comes to morality? Where do we draw the line?

It is not exactly a secret that many Thai bureaucrats and public figures have mistresses and same-sex partners, and no one jumps up and down and makes a big stink out of it. However, we do get irritated when these very same leaders take the moral high ground and preach to the public about good and evil. This is possibly because the Thai public does not hold elected leaders to a higher moral standard. We all know their holier-than-though talk is nonsense.

Strange but true, American politicians are often caught in their extra-marital activities. What is so surprising about Edwards' sexual escapades is that he kept denying it, until the media - in this case the notorious National Enquirer - dug deep until it exposed him. Finally, he gave in. Once he admitted wrongdoing, the next natural thing for him to do was to talk about the guilt and self-loathing that went on inside him after he committed the sin. Tell that to a Thai audience and we would laugh to our graves.

The notion that you felt sorry but then kept on doing it just does not fly. Edwards talked about his ego and things that he thought he could do. That was great; you do not have to be a politician to do that.

For the American people, a leader confronting his or her shortcomings is something wonderful. Former president Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair is a good example. He got caught, dealt with it and came out relatively unscathed, although it was one of the most trying episodes of his presidency. The biggest question in Thailand was whether the cigar was Cuban. The way the Thais see it, given the trade embargo with the communist country, the cigar was probably the only damaging evidence.

To the average American, Clinton was considered a good president, so American pragmatism was on display. The former president remains a popular figure in the US and the international arena today. He is still charming and, let's face it, many ladies still find him cute.

In human societies, people with power gain special sexual privileges. It is true for all sexual preferences. Here, former dictator Field Marshal Sarith Thanarat had hundreds of wives. These women were given houses and other incentives to keep them from telling others. Rielle Hunter just got a few minutes' reward with video clips for her website. How can you keep such secrets in the world today with so many women involved?

No secret sexual affairs can be kept under wraps forever. It is only a matter of time. Whoever wants an extra-marital relationship has to make sure that he or she is ready to confess immediately when the lid is off. The longer it is denied, the greater the damage. For whatever reasons, an affair with a famous person is almost impossible to keep to oneself. And so you tell a close friend, a person you think you can trust to keep a secret. The problem is that he or she has a friend, too.

Edwards' affair will have little effect on the presidential candidates but it does raise an important question: what would happen if any one of them is proved to have had an affair some time ago. Would it be used as a tool to destroy the candidacy? Should it? Does it really reflect the overall competency of the candidate?

American society needs to wake up from its national sexual obsession with famous people. This is not to say that they should take up the Thai example. God knows we are far from perfect when it comes to hanky-panky. The bottom line is that all of us are imperfect and so are our public figures.

This becomes a problem when so-called leaders, while taking the moral high ground, don't practice what they preach.